the west wing
by MegaBadBunny
Summary: Martha and Donna discover a forbidden room on the TARDIS, and despite the unease tingling in the back of their skulls, decide to go in.


The rooms and the halls of the TARDIS are long and narrow, just like him. At least that's what Martha thinks as she pushes open the door to her quarters.

(Not that she thinks of it as "her quarters" just yet; one trip and one trip only, that was the bargain. But that doesn't quite explain how the bedside lamp looks just like the one in her flat, or why the bedclothes just happen to be her particular favorite shade of blue.)

Martha stifles a laugh. For such a bigger-on-the-inside vessel, the bedrooms are awfully cramped. Her room can't be much wider than she is tall, and the sloped ceiling—why sloped? Is her room positioned against the outer hull somehow? Just what is the TARDIS really shaped like?—does nothing to combat the claustrophobic feel of the place. It makes her think of cabins below-deck, of tight-knit quarters and tiny bunks. If she didn't know any better, she would almost feel like she was traveling on a real ship.

 _A seaship_ , she quickly corrects. Just in case. All of this might be very new to her, but she was at least warned about the gentle buzzing at the back of her skull. Best to remain on good terms with her hostess, she thinks.

Weariness tugs at her bones, a special kind of gravity drawing her inexorably toward the bed, but she isn't quite ready to sleep yet.

("Go and have a good wander," he'd said.

"Is there anyplace I can't go?" she'd asked.

"Why would there be?"

She had laughed. "I don't know. Maybe you've got a restricted area. Maybe there's a west wing with a rose in a glass or something."

He had almost seemed to flinch at that, but it was only an almost-flinch. She could have imagined it.

"The TARDIS won't let you go anywhere you shouldn't," he had told her. "And don't worry: my claws are purely figurative," he'd added with a wink.

Strangely, that hadn't made her feel any better.)

Martha knows she should rest while she has the chance, but her curiosity is overwhelming, powerful enough to push through the blanket of sleepiness wrapped around her brain.

He said to go wander—who was she to turn down a doctor's orders?

Moments later, she meanders down one of many stretching, winding hallways, peering into impossible room after impossible room-A galley! An indoor greenhouse! A pool! A library! A pool inside a library!—while her fingertips grow numb from dragging over the rough walls. Pebbled coral buzzes the pads of her fingers and she wonders, absently, if one can lose one's fingerprints through such friction. Probably not, but then again, she never thought a spaceship could be alive, either. The coral-lined hall is peppered with many doors, all of them different, ranging from plain wood to stained-glass to something white and slick that you'd see in a cheap sci-fi. Each door is open, bright-lit, inviting.

Except one.

This door, with its thick wood and heavy hinges all resolutely snug shut in its frame, looks like it should lead to a cellar. ( _A castle-cellar_ , Martha thinks, and a little thrill shoots through her at the idea.) Martha can tell just by looking that if she were to open this door, it would groan, joints whining from disuse while the wood scrapes over the floor. She can practically hear the sound in her head already, like one of those cheesy sound effects that filmmakers use in different movies over and over and over like they hope no one will notice.

Definitely the sort of sound that would draw attention.

Martha tentatively reaches out for the door-handle, hesitates. All of the other doors are open. Why isn't this one? Does it mean something? But it isn't as if there's a lock on it anywhere. But what if the door is closed because this room is something special, something private?

But then again, the Doctor did say that the TARDIS wouldn't let her go anywhere she shouldn't. So it stands to reason that if she shouldn't go in here, the door won't open.

Recklessness fizzes up into her skull, leaving her almost dizzy, and she reaches out again before she can talk herself out of it, grasping the door-handle and giving a great pull. She cringes as the door screeches exactly like she expected, the sharp moans echoing through the hall. Her nerves helpfully amplify the sounds in her head. Martha waits for just a second, looking both ways, to see if the Doctor will come bounding around. When several moments pass with no sign of him, she grins and slips inside, fumbling in the darkness for a light switch.

The lights blink on. Martha blinks too. She looks around. She gasps.

"Oh my god," she breathes.

She doesn't even hear the door thud shut behind her.

* * *

If there's any room on the TARDIS that he didn't have a hand in designing, it would be the galley, Donna thinks. Nothing in here screams "spaceman," from the odd 70's-something olive green refrigerator to the ancient gas stove to the floral porcelain handles on the sink to the stone-tiled floor and the cheerful yellow walls that exude just a little too much warmth, the paint of their circular blue ivy trim slowly peeling and fading away. He may be a big softie sometimes, but it's all too domestic in here, much too human-influenced to be his design, Donna decides.

(She wonders who might have painted the ivy on the walls. And she wonders why, when every other part of the TARDIS seems almost immune to the ravages of time, the faded stenciling is one of the few things that shows its age.)

Tucking one foot beneath her, Donna takes a seat in one of the mismatched chairs at the table—her favorite chair, the high-backed one with a cushion that's going to get a permanent indent in the shape of her bum if she's not careful—and lets out a contented sigh. It was a rough day, but she's among friends, her fingers are curling around a china cup warmed by tea, and her heart is swelling with a sense of home, the same sort of expansive happiness that fills her chest whenever she sees her granddad after being away for a while. It's difficult to be too sad when you've got things as good as all that.

"So you've never been to the west wing?" Martha asks. It's just the two of them, but her voice is very quiet, almost like she's talking in a hospital or a library.

Donna's eyebrow quirks. "What d'you mean, 'west wing'? Has this place got a west?"

Laughing quietly, Martha shakes her head. "No, I guess not. That's just what I called it in my head. Sort of surprised you haven't stumbled across it yet, as long as you've been onboard."

"Really? Why, what's so special about it?"

Martha chews her lip nervously, and Donna wonders how such a straightforward and authoritative woman could suddenly be so shy.

"I sort of get the impression it's supposed to be a secret," Martha says, her voice low. "I don't think he wants us to know. But…I don't know. If you're going to travel with him, I think you've got a right."

"Why?" Donna asks. A creepy feeling shudders through her, almost like a bug crawling up her spine. Like the Doctor can hear the two of them talking, even though he's miles away in the console room. "What's in there?" she half-whispers.

Martha taps her fingers nervously on her own cup of tea. "It's something you probably need to see to believe."

"You'd be surprised what I'd believe, anymore," Donna laughs. But she pushes off the chair and stands up nonetheless, holding her hand out to Martha. Martha flashes her a grim smile before accepting the offer, taking Donna's hand in hers so she can lead her away and out of the galley.

(The cup of tea sits abandoned on the table. Donna doesn't spare it any thought; a cup of tea is a good balm for a bad day, but an illicit adventure is a better cure than anything.)

Martha leads her down one corridor after another, the shuffle of their footsteps bouncing softly off the walls. Donna eyes the doors like she always does (always open, all the doors in this place) but dread has replaced her usual curiosity; she finds her eyes drawn to the open doorways to make sure nothing's about to leap out of them. That tingly-spine feeling hasn't gone away yet and she shivers, glancing behind her, half-sure she'll see the Doctor's shadow on the floor at any moment. Martha's fingers, only the slightest bit damp with sweat, cinch tighter around hers, as if she can sense her nervousness. Donna gives her a reassuring squeeze in response.

(Is it her imagination, or is the hallway growing _darker_ the further they walk?)

Finally, they arrive at a closed door, the first door Donna has ever found shut in this entire vessel in her entire time here. Its wood is rough and heavy, its hinges tarnished, and it is very, very old. Far older than anything in the galley, and suddenly Donna wishes she hadn't left her tea behind to get lonely and cold.

"This is it?" she asks.

Martha nods wordlessly.

Donna's hand stretches outward, fingers caressing the knotty wood. _It's like a prison door_ , she thinks. _Like a dungeon_.

"Ready?" Martha asks.

Nodding, Donna forces herself to breathe evenly, bracing herself for whatever she might find past this door, for whatever it is that's making her heart race and her blood sing in her ears. "Ready," she says breathlessly.

They push the door open together, and in an instant, the inky black darkness inside bleeds away to brilliant light. Donna looks all around her, her mouth open, her eyes wide in awe. She feels tears prickling the edges of her eyelashes.

"Jesus," she whispers.

"I know," Martha agrees.

"What do we do?"

Martha doesn't answer. The two of them cling to each other, oblivious to everything but the room around them and the sound of their own nervous, shivering breaths against the silence.

* * *

Whatever he had expected to find in this room, this wasn't it.

(Really, he's been standing here for a full three minutes. That's not an exaggeration. He counted them. Three whole minutes. _Three_.

How have they not noticed him yet?)

"…and then he says," Martha laughs, gasping for breath, clutching Donna's shoulder for support, "He says—he starts quoting a sonnet at me."

"No," Donna balks, her jaw dropping like something in a cartoon. "Was it one of the famous ones?"

"The famousest," Martha replies excitedly, her mouth slurring around the s's. She thinks for a moment. "Most famous. Most famousest."

Her face scrunches up in concentration, and a giggle escapes her. "Mostest famousest."

"Actually," the Doctor interrupts—or _cuts in_ might be the better phrase, he wants to slice through their words with a bite that makes them both jump, jump and turn around and shoot him glances full of guilt and shame that they haven't noticed him for a full three minutes (three minutes and twenty-eight seconds, now), and he's irritated when precisely none of those things happen—"Actually, by the forty-eighth century, Sonnet 43 has usurped the coveted position of most famous amongst Shakespeare's collection. So really, if you're aiming for accuracy—"

"Oh, hush," Donna says, waving him off.

The Doctor's brow furrows. "I beg your pardon?"

"She didn't mean that," Martha assures him, trying (and failing) to compose her face in a sober expression. "She meant—"

"She meant 'Hush up and drink up!'" Donna says.

Martha elbows her in the side. "She meant you've been holding out on us!"

"Yeah—how comes you never told us about all this?" Donna demands, gesturing to the room all around them.

The Doctor follows the line drawn by her hand, huffing impatiently. He's not sure what all the fuss is about. The room is much the same as it was the last time he was in it—a little dim and a little musty and made to feel small by the shelves lining the walls, shelves holding bottles and vials and jugs and barrels in a variety of colors and textures and sizes. Green glass and white ceramic and rough wood and it's all just trifles, really, things collected over the course of his travels. After all, anyone who visits a new country (or a new planet, same difference sometimes) is bound to collect a certain amount of a certain kind of thing from time to time. What's so special about that? And if that's a few items every year, and you tally it up over the course of several hundred years…

Well, at some point, it just makes sense for all of the liquor to have its own room, doesn't it?

"Do you even know what you're drinking right now?" the Doctor asks. "Do you know what's in those bottles?"

Both women shake their head. "Nope!" Donna laughs, popping the 'p' much like the Doctor often does. "But, funny enough, it looks like alcohol."

"Tastes like it, too," Martha chimes in, taking a swig from her own bottle.

Huffing impatiently, the Doctor grabs one of their discarded bottles from the floor. "This was bottled in 1722," he says, waggling the bottle in their direction. He grabs another one. "This is from Svanthas Prime, from fruit plucked in the dead of an eighteen-year winter—oh, and this other one, they only ever made eleven of them! In the entire span of all of space and time and existence, there were only ever eleven bottles! Eleven!"

"Yep," Martha says. "And that one was delicious."

Laughing, Martha and Donna shove their bottles together in a sloppy toast. The Doctor just watches, open-mouthed and speechless. His two companions are sitting there, just _sitting_ there, in his _very private_ cellar, surrounded by empty and overturned bottles, and they snuck in without permission, and they're very drunk, and they're—they're—they're _laughing_ at him.

"Think he's mad?" Martha giggles loudly into Donna's ear.

"Think his eyebrow's gonna shoot off his forehead," Donna chuckles.

"This is my property!" the Doctor protests, spluttering. "These are things I picked up on my travels, they're special and exotic and rare, they're meant for collecting, they're meant for—"

"Drinking?" Donna asks innocently, taking another swig.

The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Humans," he scoffs. "Can't you ever appreciate something without consuming it? Can't you enjoy anything without the assistance of chemical augmentation?"

"Hmm," Donna says, tilting her head thoughtfully. She shakes her head. "Nah."

"Why are you even come in here? Don't either of you appreciate the meaning of _privacy_?"

"Well, you always told us the TARDIS wouldn't let us go anywhere we weren't allowed," says Donna. "So if you think about it, it's not really our fault, is it?"

With an impatient huff, the Doctor glares at them both.

"Come on," Martha sighs. She pulls on the Doctor's jacket sleeve, urging him to join them on the floor. "It was a hard day, today. We just wanted to loosen up a bit. Reckon you could do with a bit of loosening up, too."

The Doctor stiffens. "That's not necessary."

"Tsk tsk. No sense of fun," Donna says to Martha, affecting a pout.

"None whatsoever," Martha agrees.

"Reckon he lost it along with his sense of humor?"

"Probably back when he was a wee little three-hundred-year old."

"That's right, he's just a stodgy old man with his stodgy old beer collection gathering stodgy old dust."

"All work, no play makes the Doctor a dull Doctor," Martha hiccups.

Donna snorts. "Bet he'd have fun with us if Rose was here."

The Doctor freezes, blood turning to ice in his veins. In his peripheral vision, he is distantly aware that Martha has frozen as well, her hand and her bottle of ill-gotten liquor halfway to her mouth and tilted precariously. She's shooting him a worried look, heedless of the alcohol welling at the mouth of her bottle, droplets growing fat and heavy and swollen with potential before falling to the floor with a loud _plink_.

"Just sayin'," Donna finishes with a shrug.

The moment broken, it's as if an invisible mask settles itself over the Doctor's face, rearranging his features into a cool and even expression. He's a Time Lord, for goodness' sake; he's better than this. He won't let the mere mention of her name rattle him. He won't. He _won't_.

"Doctor, I'm sorry, I'm sure Donna didn't mean—" Martha tries to say, her words slurred together with drink and anxiety, but the Doctor just waves her off.

"Doesn't matter," he says with a lightness he doesn't feel. "It's a moot point either way, because if Rose was here, she wouldn't have broken into my private stores without permission. Because Rose, you see, had the tiniest measure of respect for my privacy and my property. Because Rose wasn't a nosy little busybody."

Donna and Martha exchange a look and quickly glance away, lips pursed as if they're trying not to laugh, and now the Doctor is just plain irritated.

"What?" he snaps.

"Sorry, Doctor," Martha splutters, biting her lip. "But, erm. That might not be entirely true…?"

The Doctor does his very best to glare daggers into her but she just claps one hand over her mouth and points with the other hand to Donna, sloshing alcohol all along the way. Grinning so hard it's a wonder her face doesn't split with the force of it, Donna presents an old Polaroid photo, handing it to the Doctor with a drunken flourish. With a scowl, the Doctor takes it, first donning his glasses in such a fashion that it would suggest, to anyone who might be paying attention, that he is _very_ irritated right now, and not to be trifled with.

He looks at the photo.

It's a picture of Rose and Jack.

Blinking in surprise, the Doctor peers closer. The photo is a little water-stained—or more likely, alcohol-stained—and it has discolored a bit, its whites a little yellow and its darks the color of old molasses, but the subjects are unmistakable. The Doctor has got no clue where they procured the camera, or indeed what might have happened to it in the years since, but the photo shows Rose and Jack huddled together in this very room, Jack taking a selfie if the angle of his arm is anything to go by. It's clear from their glassy eyes, wide grins, and surrounding wide moat of empty alcohol bottles that the two of them are quite intoxicated. Rose in particular is blushing almost as brightly as her namesake; her smile, even if inebriated, radiates pure joy, same as it ever did. Even now, the Doctor can feel its contagious effects, tugging gently at the corners of his mouth.

He flips the photo over and is rewarded by a few lines of Rose's messy scrawl, scribbled even more haphazardly than usual:

 _Dear Doctor,_

 _We owe u_ _2/_ _3/_ _5/_ _a lot new_ _alchohol_ _alcohol_

 _Love, Rose and Jack_

 _xoxoxoxo_

He smiles despite himself. Years later and a universe away, and she's still surprising him, somehow.

"Awww, look at old Space Man now," Donna teases, nudging Martha with her elbow. "He's just a giant sap, see?"

"Nothing wrong with that," Martha replies softly.

Clearing his throat, the Doctor removes and pockets his spectacles. "Right. That still doesn't address the issue—"

"—of you having a little nightcap with us?" Donna interrupts, waggling her alcohol bottle invitingly. The Doctor eyes the bottle, looks at Donna, looks at Martha. Martha offers an encouraging smile. _Come on_ , her smile seems to say. _Have a little fun. Just a little?_

The Doctor heaves an impatient sigh. _Humans_. You'd think he'd be immune to their influence by now.

With a roll of his eyes, the Doctor grabs the bottle from Donna and takes a swig. But before Donna has a chance to snatch it back, he tilts back his head and the bottle even further, draining away its contents in great easy gulps, privately reveling in both the burn of the liquor cascading down his throat and the increasingly shocked expressions of his two human companions looking on. Within seconds he has completely drained the bottle, and Donna and Martha each watch him open-mouthed as he holds out the empty vessel with a satisfied smirk.

"I'm plenty fun," he says, his voice perfectly even and lacking even the tiniest hint of inebriation. "For your information."

Mouth snapping shut, Donna takes back the bottle, eyes wide.

"Good job, Space Man," Martha beams, elbowing Donna until she nods dumbly.

The Doctor shoots Martha a wink before turning round to leave the way he came in. Personally, he's got no desire to muddy his senses with drink or anything else, and it would take far too much alcohol to do so, besides, but it was worth it to see the shock plastered across his companions' faces. They're right—this stuff was made to be enjoyed, not locked away in a dusty old cupboard. Let the humans have a little more fun on their own before the real world comes knocking again.

(Neither companion notices him slip the Polaroid into his breast-pocket before he leaves.)

* * *

Martha isn't certain there are words in the English language adequate to describe her hangover the next morning.

"Good morning!" the Doctor chirps cheerfully as she enters the galley, and god, is he always so annoyingly happy and _loud_? "Ready for breakfast?"

"Breakfast…?"

Wincing in the bright galley light, Martha notices the scent of food for the first time, and clamps her mouth shut to stop herself being sick. How did she miss the noises of cooking food before? How did she miss the _smell_?

"Oh, god," she says, clamping a hand over her nose and mouth.

"Whipped it up special, just for you lot," the Doctor says with an ever-broadening grin.

A groan emitting from the corner of the room lets Martha know they're not alone. She looks over to see a puddle of bathrobe and mussed ginger hair that may once have been Donna, huddled over the table and grumbling grumpily into the wood. The Doctor watches her with a chuckle and a shake of the head.

"You're enjoying this way too much," Martha accuses through her fingers.

"On the contrary, I think I'm enjoying this _precisely_ the right amount," the Doctor laughs.

"Oi," says the Donna-shaped lump. "Have a little decency, won't you? Some of us are trying to have our seltzer in peace."

"No seltzer," replies the Doctor, plucking the cup out of her limp hands. "It's a full English for you two, chock-full of protein and starch and fatty goodness perfect to help combat those nasty hangovers of yours. Which I might have warned you about in advance," he says, replacing Donna's teacup with a plate heaped high in toast and eggs and sausage and bacon and beans, each of them buttery and sizzling and absolutely the worst things Martha has ever laid eyes on, "if you'd thought to ask me before plundering my collection, that is."

"Yeah, well, you can shove your food and your snotty comments right up your—"

The Doctor pushes a piece of buttered toast into Donna's open mouth, muffling the rest of her words. He flashes a beatific smile in response to her withering glare.

"Do you know, I think you're both right," says the Doctor, beaming at them both. "This _is_ fun!"


End file.
